


Bleed Myself Dry

by ladymac111



Series: as in a morning sunrise [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood Donation, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Miscarriage, POV First Person, Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 19:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladymac111/pseuds/ladymac111
Summary: A decade after Voltron's last battle, Pidge and Hunk have gotten their lives settled and are finally ready to start a family.  But nothing is ever straightforward, and their first attempt doesn't go how anyone would have hoped.





	Bleed Myself Dry

**Author's Note:**

> This is set a good fifteen to twenty years after where we currently are in the series, when everyone has come back to Earth and eventually settled down. Hunk and Pidge have been married for about ten years, and that story is coming later.
> 
> Dedicated to everyone who's having related ideas and screaming with me in the Hidge group chat, i love you guys sfm
> 
> Content advisories are in the tags.

_February  
_ _Thursday_

 

I'm curled up on the couch when Hunk comes in from the cold. I've been lying here staring at nothing for what seems like hours, ever since I got home from the doctor. Just waiting for him to get back, because maybe when he's here everything won't be impossible.

"Hey, Pidge."

"Hi."

His demeanor changes instantly, and he sets the grocery bags on the floor and pulls his coat off hurriedly. "Are you okay? Did something happen at your appointment?" He drops down next to me and touches my cheek; his fingers are freezing. "What's going on, is the baby okay?"

This feels like the worst thing I've ever done to him, and suddenly, for the first time all day, I start to cry. It's completely overwhelming but I have to get it out, I _have_ to tell him. "We had to terminate the pregnancy," I choke, struggling to breathe.

His eyes go wide with shock and he grabs my shoulder a little too hard. "What? Why?"

"It was ectopic. Tubal."

"Auwe..." Tears fill his eyes all at once, and before I know it he's enveloped me with his arms and he's shaking and I'm crying and it's horrible but he's _here_ and we're in this together, at least. I don't have to do this alone any more.

"That's why I was having so much pain," I gasp.

"Pidge..." He can barely speak through his own tears.

"They gave me methotrexate." I don't know why I'm telling him everything, all the details. Well, of course I'll tell him, but I don't have to do it now. Except that I do. Though I can't really speak, at the moment.

My uterus starts to cramp, another pain in the long series that started last week, a sharpening of that persistent ache I've had. The pain seems different than what I've been having -- stronger, maybe, or maybe I'm imagining -- and it builds as the seconds pass. I curl into Hunk, crying even harder, trembling violently in spite of myself. Our baby is dying. Probably already gone now. It never had a chance.

 

 

_Saturday_

 

Pidge has been in the bathroom for a while, the one that adjoins our bedroom, and I'm starting to get nervous. There haven't been any worrying sounds, when I've come in here and listened, just her moving around and quite a bit of water running in the sink. But it's been like fifteen minutes, and since she had the abortion two days ago I don't think I'm wrong to be overly cautious.

I steel myself and tap on the door. "Pidge? You okay?"

I hear a tiny noise that sounds awfully like crying, and it zings through every one of my nerves, instant fear. "No."

"What's going on? Do you need help?"

"No, don't come in."

I was reaching for the doorknob, and I jerk my hand back. "What? Why?"

"There's--" a little gasp "--a lot of blood."

That's just what I needed to push me over from overprotective worry into actual panic. "You're bleeding? If you're bleeding heavily you might need help, I--"

" _No,_ for the love of _god_ , Hunk, do _not_ come in here. I know how you are with blood and I cannot handle you being a mess right now too."

Shit, she's right, she's always right. But I can't _not_ help, what can I do? "Should I call your mom?"

She hesitates, and I think I made the right call. "Yeah," she says quietly. "I didn't ... I didn't want to tell her and Dad about this, but ... I think I need my mom."

"You sit tight. I'll call her." My phone is on the dresser, and my hands are shaking when I pick it up and hit Colleen's contact.

It only rings one and a half times. "Hello?"

"Hey, Colleen, it's me."  Why does she never check the caller ID when she answers?  It's so weird to announce myself to her every time.

"Oh, hi Hunk, how are things?"

"Not good. Listen, could you come over? Like, right away? Pidge isn't well and she needs you because I'm no good with this."

Her voice changes immediately. "Wait, what? No good with what?"

I suddenly find I can't answer; I wasn't expecting to spill the beans by phone.

Then Pidge's voice, faintly from the bathroom: "Just tell her."

I force a sigh, shuddering. "Pidge says I should just tell you now."

"Yes, you should _definitely_ tell me now. What's going on?"

"Okay, uh." Start at the beginning. "So five weeks ago we had a positive pregnancy test."

Colleen gasps. This is so not how I wanted to tell _anybody_ about our first pregnancy.

"But two weeks ago," I continue, but I stop, my words catch in my throat. _Get it out_. "A week ago she started having some pain, and it didn't get better and then she started spotting, so two days ago she went to the doctor and they did an ultrasound, and the fetus had implanted in her fallopian tube."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah."

"She had an abortion. She's -- she's having the abortion right now."

"Yeah. I don't know what's wrong exactly but she said there's a lot of blood and I have hemophobia, so can you please come and help because I don't know what else to do." I'm almost crying by the time I get to the end of the sentence.

"Yes, yes of course, I'll be right there." There's vigorous shuffling in the background. "Shit. Oh my god. Okay, what does it normally take me, ten minutes to get there? Fifteen?"

"That's about right."

"I'll be there in five. Tell Pidge not to move, I'm coming."

I can't help letting out a little sob of relief. "Okay. See you soon."

"Very soon. Bye for now."

She hangs up, and I shuffle back over to the bathroom door. Inside I can hear Pidge trying not to cry and not being very successful. "She's on her way," I say, and I sound as wrecked as I feel. "She said she'd be here in five minutes."

"Okay." There's a loud, wet sniff. "Okay. Before she gets here, can you do something for me?"

"Yeah, of course, anything."

"I need clean underwear and pants."

God, she must not be kidding when she says there's a lot of blood -- I've seen the fallout when she leaked on a period a couple of times, but she's never needed fresh pants. "Yeah, just a minute. What kind of pants?"

"I don't care. Pajama pants."

"Right, good. Okay." I grab what she needs from her drawers. "How should I give you this?"

She sighs, like she's thinking. "Open the door just enough to put it inside. Really don't come in though, please. I'm a mess."

"I won't, I promise. Ready?"

"Okay."

My heart is thundering as I turn the knob, and push the door open just enough that I can reach in and set the clothes on the corner of the counter. It's so tempting to look at the mirror and try to get a glimpse of her, but I don't. I pull the door shut again.

"Thank you."

"Any time." I sit down on the floor next to the door and close my eyes, trying to come down emotionally and utterly failing. I can hear her moving around a little, hear cloth shuffling, and then just quiet.

The doorbell ringing frantically interrupts my silent panic, and I jump to my feet and rush downstairs to let Colleen in.

 

I spend the next hour sitting outside that bathroom door, trying not to jump to horrible conclusions, but incapable of being anywhere else. Pidge and her mother talk quietly, and there's quite a bit of crying, and at one point I hear Pidge gagging and then spitting, and then Colleen calls to me that it's okay, which is good because it made my stomach turn with sympathy and terror.

Another several minutes pass, and she calls to me again. "Hunk?"

"I'm here."

"I think ... I think we need to take Pidge to the hospital. I don't think she should be losing so much blood."

I feel sick again, a little dizzy, but I steel myself: Pidge needs me. "There's a high risk of complications since it was ectopic."

"Exactly." She opens the door very slightly and hands me her keys. "Go start the car and find the closest ER. I'll bring her right down."

I almost trip in my haste to get downstairs, and only barely remember my coat and scarf, which is important since it's bitterly cold outside today. Colleen's car is a tiny thing, but I get the driver seat adjusted and it's almost warm by the time Colleen and Pidge come out the front door. Pidge is _way_ too pale, with dark bags under her eyes, and when she gets in the passenger seat she all but collapses.

I grab her hand. "It'll be okay."

She groans, and rouses herself just enough to buckle the seatbelt. Colleen shoves herself into the backseat. "Go. Now."

 

Colleen gets Pidge inside as soon as I pull up, but then it takes me _forever_ to find parking, and I'm holding back panicked tears when I finally get into the ER myself. Luckily Colleen is right there, and she grabs me immediately.

"Where is she? What's going on?"

"They're prepping her for surgery." There are tears in her eyes, and her face is blotchy; she's obviously been crying. "The tube ruptured, Hunk, she was bleeding out."

"Oh my god." This feeling in my chest is unbearable; I want to collapse. "Will she be okay? I can't--"

"She'll be okay." She squeezes my hands and fresh tears fall down her cheeks. "She will, they promised me. They know what to do, and they're giving her a transfusion right now." She pauses, takes a few deep breaths, seemingly composing herself. I couldn't do that right now if I tried; my whole body is trembling uncontrollably and I feel like all of my joints are about to fail simultaneously.

"The doctor said that in most cases like this tube will be irreparably damaged," Colleen continues, quietly. "They'll most likely remove it completely. But it's only on the one side. Pidge will be okay, and you can still conceive again in the future."

I do collapse then, only for half a second before I catch myself, and Colleen and a buff nurse have me by the elbows too. "Waiting room," the nurse says, and his voice is gruff but soft; I'm immediately more at ease, and the way Colleen looks at him I know he's the one who saw to Pidge when she came in. "She's in good hands, you two need to try to relax. Come on."

 

The surgery doesn't last long according to the clock, but it feels like a lifetime of hell. Our nurse Julian comes to get us as soon as Pidge is stable again, and then nothing in the universe could drag me away from her side.

At first all I can do when I'm finally with her is cry, and I hope that she's still out of it enough that I'm not upsetting her more. Colleen does her best to try to comfort me, and it's sweet but I'm really beyond any kind of soothing. When I do finally compose myself I start talking to Pidge, just about nothing, astronomy and electromagnetism and anything that comes into my mind, for what must be an hour. Her eyes begin to open just as I feel like I'm getting to the end of what I can say about cosmological redshift, and I stop abruptly when her fingers twitch in my hand.

"Pidge?"

"White dielectric material," she murmurs, her voice hoarse.

A hysterical laugh bursts out of me, and I'm crying again, this time from delight and relief. "Yeah, the pigeons."

Her mouth pulls into a tiny smile. "It wasn't the pigeons."

"No, it was the big bang."

"Shouldn't blame pigeons for the creation of the universe."

I bend down and kiss her knuckles as hard as I dare, and she flexes slightly in my grip.

Colleen comes in -- she had been off finding coffee -- and makes a sound that resonates through my whole being. "Sweetheart, you're awake."

"Hi, Mom."

She pulls up a chair beside me, by Pidge's knees. "How are you feeling?"

"Like shit," Pidge sighs. "And I don't ... I don't completely remember what happened. How I got here."

"Don't worry about that," I say. "It's probably just the anaesthetic."

"I had surgery."

"Yeah," Colleen says, and I kiss Pidge's hand again. "Your fallopian tube ruptured. They went in and removed the ... the remaining products of conception." God, I'm really starting to hate that phrase, but it's not quite so awful as remembering that it was our baby, so I'm a little glad Colleen worded it that way. "They stopped the worst of the bleeding, and then removed the rest of the tube. The scarring would have been too bad anyway."

Pidge nods slowly, and looks like she's trying very hard to keep it together and not exactly succeeding. "So that side's done now."

"It is," Colleen says. "But they said the other side is fine. You can still conceive the old-fashioned way."

Pidge closes her eyes, and tears drip down both of her cheeks. "Okay."

 

By the time the day shift comes, and with it, Pidge's discharge from the hospital's care, I haven't left her side for eight hours solid, and I've seen more blood than I feel like I have in my entire life until this point -- and far, _far_ too much of it was my wife's. It occurs to me fleetingly while the doctor is giving me aftercare instructions that none of this blood has made me feel sick like it usually does, but I'm trying too hard to pay attention to my instructions to do more than wonder in passing if this shitshow has somehow cured me of that.

Once we're home, Colleen helps me get Pidge's bloody clothes into the laundry and gives the bathroom a good wiping-down, and then finally -- reluctantly -- heads back to her own life, but with a promise that she'll come by tomorrow morning to check on us.

Pidge spends the rest of the morning in bed, alternating between sleeping, crying, and staring blankly into the middle distance. I feel like I want to try to talk to her about this, but what can I possibly say? What is she _feeling_ right now? She had an abortion and then almost died. Our baby nearly killed her, and struck a blow to her future fertility. I barely know what _I'm_ feeling about all of this, and I'm not at the center of it like she is. I can't imagine how much worse she feels.

So I stay close. I finally sleep with her beside me, and when I wake up an hour later, I feed her and make her hot beverages, I help her to the bathroom when she's feeling shaky and in the afternoon I get her bundled into the couch and make her take her medication and eat something. I watch TV with her, something stupid that usually makes us laugh, and at one bit I catch her actually smiling a tiny bit, and feel a million times lighter.

She's _alive_. Even though she's still bleeding (which we've been told is normal, though it's still terrifying), it's not as heavy now, the anemia isn't critical; she's okay and she's back home with me, and we've been assured that we can still get pregnant later, though right now that seems like a ridiculous thing to think about. It was an ordeal, and we lost the baby, but we survived. She survived. We're still together.

 

The day that Pidge goes back to work, I have the afternoon off, so I psych myself up and go to the blood center. They don't seem fazed that I'm a first-time donor, and really seem to be going out of their way to make me feel comfortable and thank me for my generosity. I get a phlebotomist named Maria, who gets that face when I walk in like she recognizes me -- and like she actually knows who I am, not just that I look familiar. She chats with me while she takes my vitals and my history, and doesn't seem to mind that I look away when she pricks my finger to check iron.

When the bandage is firmly on my fingertip I look back. "Perfect," Maria says. "Nice high hematocrit, solid fifteen. Were you going to donate whole blood today?"

I didn't realize there were different options. "I guess so?"

"That's what most first-time donors do," she says. "It doesn't take long, and unless you know your blood type already you don't know if a different component might be more useful."

"I'm O negative," I say. "I know that's the universal donor type."

She smiles broadly. "It is. Your whole blood is great for us, unless you wanted to do double red cell apheresis. That one takes a little longer."

I swallow a little knot of nerves and try to will my stomach to settle. "Whole blood is probably better. And I should let you know, I ... I've had issues with blood in the past. Hemophobia. Like, seeing it always used to make me feel sick."

Maria raises her eyebrows. "Always _used_ to?"

"Yeah, so ... um." Who am I kidding, I want to tell her the story, even though she knows who I am, knows who Pidge is. "So last week my wife had to terminate an ectopic pregnancy."

She lets out a soft gasp.  "Oh my god. I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, thanks." I can't let it hit me now -- I've been focusing so hard on Pidge's recovery that I haven't really thought about the fact that we lost the baby, and if I do that now I'll be a complete wreck. "Anyway, it ... it got far enough along that the tube ruptured and we had to take her to the ER. They told me she got a unit of blood while she was there, and that's what made me decide I wanted to donate, since donors saved her life."

Maria nods solemnly. "That's exactly what donors do."

"Anyway, during all of that I saw a lot of blood, and way too much of it was hers. But I was so focused on trying to help her that I didn't really think about how it usually affects me, until I realized that it ... it didn't." I shrug. "I dunno. But I thought I'd try donating."

"That's very noble of you. But I want you to promise me one thing, okay?"

"Okay, what?"

"I want you to tell me _immediately_ if you don't feel well while you're donating. Lightheaded, nauseated, anything like that. One unit of blood isn't worth your safety."

I really want to argue with her -- I would have bled myself dry if it would have helped Pidge last week, and I'm feeling like I want to do the same to replenish what she used.

Maria's still looking at me intensely. "Promise?"

I swallow and nod. "I promise."

"Pidge wouldn't like it if you hurt yourself."

God, she'd kill me. "No, she wouldn't."

"Good. Okay, let's go get you set up."

 

I'm in the kitchen when Pidge gets home from work, starting to put dinner together. She finds me right away, as always -- I'm here more often than not, and she smiles at me when she comes in. "Hi."

"Hey. How was work?"

"Good enough, hard getting caught up after that week I missed, but I managed. Thanks for not minding that I'm home sort of late."

"No problem. Dinner will be ready in ten, okay?"

"Great." I'm not looking at her directly, but in my peripheral vision I can see her freeze for a second. "What happened to your arm?"

I glance down -- the gauze is still taped over the inside of my right elbow, since it hasn't been six hours yet and I'm not taking any chances. The pink is bright against my skin. "I gave blood today."

"You gave blood? _You_ gave blood? Like, donated? Voluntarily?"

I turn to face her. "Yeah."

She's blinking quickly in confusion. "I -- why? How?"

I shrug, trying to act nonchalant, but I'm sure she can see right through me. "Since you got that transfusion last week, it got me thinking. You would have died without blood donors. I'm healthy, I've got lots of blood, and I'm the universal donor type, so why shouldn't I?"

She shakes her head. "But your ... your thing, about blood. Your phobia."

"I got past it. Well, past it enough. I saw so much of your blood when you were in the hospital, I guess it overloaded me and I have immunity now. I did okay at the blood center today."

"Just okay?"

"Maria said I was great."

Pidge grins, and my love for her is suddenly overwhelming. "Well, if Maria said so."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Blood donors save lives! If you're old enough and healthy enough (and not an automatic deferral -- I know some of the policy re mlm is really shitty) please consider giving a little bit of your time to help someone who's sick. Feel free to ask me any questions you have, I've been donating since 2004.
> 
> The meaning of ["white dielectric material"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Allan_Penzias#Career) for those who aren't as big of a cosmology nerd as I am.


End file.
